Maya Wiley's push for civil rights

Maya Wiley is redefining the word “counsel” in the New York City mayor’s office.

The renowned civil rights attorney joined Bill de Blasio’s administration earlier this year as the Counsel to the Mayor, signaling that the office wouldn’t necessarily continue the traditionally lawyerly role of her predecessors.

The daughter of civil rights icon George A. Wiley — who was regularly arrested for his activism — grew up in Washington, D.C., and was shaped by her father’s passion.

“The conversations around the house were always like, ‘Oh, Dad won’t be home for dinner tonight — he’s in jail,’” Wiley, 50, said. Her family’s extensive history with racial politics and inequality inspired Wiley to focus on progressive issues that the new mayor has embraced.

She is one of a group of strong women whom de Blasio has put front and center in his administration (including his wife, Chirlane McCray), empowering and broadening the portfolios of female leaders across the board.

Wiley is focused on tech projects, such as expanding broadband access throughout the city, for example, in addition to being the mayor’s lawyer. It’s an issue that relates to what has been her core mission of racial equality, the mayor said when he appointed her, because the city’s outdated tech infrastructure denies too many people economic opportunities.

A resident of the mayor’s home borough of Brooklyn and mother to two daughters, she co-founded the nonprofit Center for Social Inclusion and has focused throughout her career on ending racism, whether obvious or subtle.

This stop is the latest in her long history of fighting injustices across all fronts, from the halls of Ivy League institutions to the streets of New York City. Her earlier high-profile jobs have included the ACLU’s National Legal Department and the poverty and justice program of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. She also worked in the civil division of the Manhattan federal prosecutor’s office.

Her Ivy League education could have landed her a high-paying job on Wall Street, but that not where her journey took her.

What inspired you to want to become a lawyer?

“The first job I ever thought I wanted to have was a judge. … My father organized women on welfare and one of the evenings [in a meeting at the Wiley house] they spent all their time talking about how abused they were by this judge. … This particular judge disagreed with them ideologically and used his position to hold them overnight, force them all individually onto the witness stand and humiliate them.

“We were not a disadvantaged family. And yet I spent much of my childhood in a really low-income neighborhood in an inner-city school and with parents who were fighting very hard [in] the intersection of race and poverty in America. … So that’s just such a part of my DNA. … I always knew that whatever I did, I would be working at the intersection of race and poverty.”

In law school or college, and beyond, was there anything you had to overcome?

“Oh absolutely. … I went to Dartmouth College. I was there in the ’80s. … Here I was this black high school graduate from a really progressive activist family coming from a mostly black city where the white folk were pretty far left. … I just didn’t understand how sheltered I had been in that environment. [There was a right-wing campus newspaper and] the first story I was greeted with my first week at Dartmouth was a story entitled ‘I Be’s a Black Student at Dartmouth.’

“And it was this article essentially attacking affirmative action, and attacking the intellectual capabilities of black students at Dartmouth … and written in Ebonics, as if any one of us talked that way. Even getting in the lunch line, or the breakfast and dinner line, … [I heard students complain that the quality of their education] was being lowered because of black students.”